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Have you ever come across one of these (listed below) headlines before?

“How I made millions of dollars within one month selling information products without spending a dime.”

“Exposed: How to make $10,000 monthly through affiliate marketing.”

“Do you want to quit your day job and make 6-figures monthly from your blog? Get my powerful ebook.”

“Revealed: How I’m making at least $500 daily from fiverr.”

“My Secret Copy-and-paste system that will rake you millions of Naira at the click of a button.”

Yeah… I thought so!

And I’m certain you must have even gone ahead to click one of them. But, making money online is not that easy.

Most self-proclaimed “webmasters” will never admit this to you. They’re just interested in swindling your hard-earned cash in return for their shitty ebooks that will get you no where.

Forget about the hype and get-rich schemes saturating the internet today.

Making money online is not as easy as eating a yummy piece of chocolate. It requires the right knowledge, financial investment, a lot of hard work and a determined mind.

If you’ve been thinking that all you need to do is to start a free blog hosted on Blogger or WordPress.com, publish few articles you copied from other website on your blog, apply for adsense and watch your bank account explode with cash.

Then, you’ll be totally disappointed as you won’t make a dime.

If making money online was that easy, everyone would be a millionaire overnight.

Now, this might scare you a little to call it quit before venturing into something you may not see reasonable results.

But, just like you know: the truth is always bitter and transparency really matters.

I hate lies, scam and deception!

That’s not how I roll.

So, how exactly can you make money online the right way in 2016?

Here’s the answer: you have to sell something?

Research or look up ways top online entrepreneurs make cool cash online and you’ll notice they either sell a service, a product or …you just name it.

That’s the bottom line.

Now, you might be wondering: what exactly do you sell?

I’ll answer that in a moment.

First, let me give you a better illustration to give you a broad picture of how it works.

Do you know the most popular social network in the world?

It’s Facebook, the very first social network to surpass 1 billion registered users, and makes billions of dollars on a daily basis.

How does Facebook achieve this?

The answer is simple: by selling.

Now, what exactly does Facebook sell?

They sell advert space on their website.

I’m sure you have a Facebook account and one way or the other (while chatting with your friends) you must have come across some adverts on your timeline or news feeds.

Did you see the advert for Blackberry phones by JIJI.ng?

Did these adverts just appear there by accident?

Of course not!

Business owners, big brands, website/blog owners, organisations … pay Facebook huge sums of dollars to place this advert on their website.

Another good example is the world most populous website on the planet: Google.

It’s the biggest search engine you can find today, recording billions of searches every single day.

So, what does Google sell?

Just take a look at this image below:

The fight for the top spot on Google is going to continue as long as the search engine exist and most big brands who don’t want to go through the fierce competition pays Google to place an advert on the first page which makes them visible to customers.

And each time someone clicks on the advert, the advertiser pays Google anything between $0.50 and $20 depending on the keyword.

Yes, that’s just for a single click.

So, just like Facebook, Google sells advert space on their search results.

You get?

And makes billions of dollars on a daily basis.

Now before you think this doesn’t happen in Nigeria, let’s come home:

You must have heard of Jumia, the largest online retail store in Nigeria, where customers orders for different items ranging from electronics, gadgets, android phones… clothes etc. and it get delivered right to their door step.

In order words, Jumia make money online by selling physical products Nigerians love to buy. A similar example is Konga.com that sells products too.

Need more examples?

Here you go:

I’m sure you know Nairaland, which is the biggest online forum in Nigeria, owned by Seun Osewa. It generates massive traffic on a daily basis and makes millions of Naira.

As at the time of writing this post, it has over 1 million members and millions of topics are created every blessed day.

Yes, that’s not a typo!

How does Nairaland makes money?

By selling advert space. (see image below)

Advert Spaces on Nairaland

Business owners, Nigerian web hosting companies, bloggers, webmasters, individuals etc. pay Nairaland to place their advert on the specific section of their choice.

This is possible because of the massive traffic Nairaland commands on a daily basis.

Another good example is Linda Ikeji, one of the pioneer bloggers in Nigeria that earns millions of Naira monthly.

How exactly?

By selling!

And what does she sell?

She sells advert space on her blog. Big companies like Guinness, Coca-cola etc. all queue up to place their advert on her blog and she charges them millions of Naira monthly.

She also places Google ads on her blog which result to a big pay check monthly.

If she just created a blog without offering anything for sell, she wouldn’t make a dime online.

In fact, since when she went public to announce that she bought a mansion in Banana Island from the money she made from blogging, every Nigerian has jumped on the bandwagon.

And here’s me too, yours truly.

I make cool cash online by selling.

So, what exactly do I sell?

My blog setup service. (I’ve made thousands of Naira from setting up blogs for individuals and also sell my website design skills)

Freelance writing. (This business is the bomb, if you have great research and writing skills)

I also earn commissions by promoting affiliate products on this little tiny blog.

Other notable Nigerians that are making it big in Nigeria include:

Muhammed Abdullahi Tosin, the owner of Naijawriterscoach. This is the blog where Nigerians win laurels, essay competitions and how they can get their works published. He sells amazing ebooks and courses that helps his readers kick-start their writing dream and win laurels from essay competitions and makes thousands of Naira monthly.

Bamidele Onibalusi, the brain behind Writerincharge, who started making thousands of Naira before he was even 18 by selling his freelance writing skills to high-paying foreign clients.

Abass Toriola of Webincomeplus, the most honest online business “guru” I’ve ever come across, who makes a killing sum from various online businesses and sells courses and ebooks too on his blog.

I can go on and on … but the bottom line is: to make money online you need to sell something.

Now, what exactly do you sell?

And the answer is quite simple: sell what is valuable, resourceful and what will offer help to the buyer.

Not just crap that saturate the internet.

You see, when people buy things that give them value and offer them help, they would thank you for it and this would boost your credibility online. Customers will trust you and also recommend others to you.

Let me explain better:

Look at the woman selling Akara at the junction. She takes her time to pound the beans, grind it and then finally fry it into what you see as Akara.

When you buy it and find it very delicious and yummy, won’t you patronize her again?

Sometimes, you could even recommend her to your friend.

You get the drift, right?

Value comes in different forms:

It could be quality information products like ebooks, videos, slideshows, webinars, workshops etc.

It could be providing free information about a particular topic that Nigerians are eager to learn about on a blog and build a massive audience in order to attract advertisers.

It could be a top-notch online course or tutorial on a particular topic that Nigerians are interested to learn and you can deliver as expected.

I’m curious and I would love to hear your thoughts on this: do you have a blog where you intend to sell? What kind of things do you intend to sell? Feel free to leave a comment, I’ll reply.

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6 Comments

Hi Emmanuel,
You’ve done a great job putting this together. I found it valuable.
Just as you rightly said, most people have been sold on that erroneous belief that money comes easy and quickly online.

No, that’s not it.

The internet is no different than the other media we are used to; radio, television and newspapers.
No media make money without selling something. This is so because the money you need is actually in someone else’s pocket, and you can only get it when you give something of equal or more value in return.

The golden truth is that you can only build ‘genuine’ wealth when you add values to others. The more the better.
My advice to the ‘opportunity seekers’ who chase money has always been to focus less on the money, but more on adding values to people’s lives.

If money is your main object of focus, you may not make any eventually.

Keep up the good works you’re doing here.
Sincerely,
Najeem Akinwande.

I found this article explanatory. I also liked the fact that it harps on creating value. It’s a principle of wealth creation, create vale for others and you get value in return.

Whether you recommend affiliate products, create websites for people or teach people how to speak a new language, ensure to create value for people. And the value will come back to you, in the form of money, word-of-mouth referrals, impact, etc.

Well written piece ,if only our youths can put into full use and not depending ,then they would shun 8-4 jobs,online Money making is the real thing now and the amazing thing is that it can be done from Home anytime and under any condition

Ige,
Thanks for reading for reading the post and sharing your thoughts. Well appreciated! Making money is real but most Nigerians actually think you have to scam people to make money online. Can you imagine? This ignorance is exactly why most people are working their ass off with a boring day job.

Can you help me stop this ignorance by sharing this post with your peeps. I’ll really appreciate it! Just so you know, your comment was caught in my spam folder. You might want to contact askimet about this.

Thanks a lot Segun for the kind words, I really appreciate it! If you love what I’m doing here, kindly share this post with your peeps: Be generous with information. Hope to see you more often on the blog. I’m really curious to know: how you built your forum?